We work from the ceiling down

Construction dust settles on every surface

Sanding drywall makes a dust finer than flour, and it does not stay in the room where it was made. It floats through the whole building before it settles. You find it on the tops of door frames and inside brand new cabinets. It coats window sills and the blades of ceiling fans. A broom only pushes it around. A dry rag smears it into a gray film that shows up when the sun hits the wall.

Order matters more than anything else on this job. We start high, with the ceiling fans and the light fixtures, because anything knocked off up there lands on whatever sits below. Then we move down to the door tops and the trim. Cabinets get cleaned on the inside first, then on the outside. Everything gets vacuumed dry first and wiped damp second, since water on drywall dust turns it into a thin paste. The floors come last, once nothing is left up high to fall on them.

You can check the work yourself. Run a finger along the top of a door frame and it should come away clean. A dark floor should show no haze when you look across it toward a window. When a step gets skipped, the dust shows it fast. The furnace kicks on and pushes whatever was left in the vents back into the room. By the next morning, a counter that looked clean has a film on it again.

• Dust vacuumed from the ceiling down
• Paint specks and stickers taken off glass
• Window and door tracks scraped and vacuumed
• Cabinets and drawers wiped inside and out
• Floors washed last, once the dust settles

Dry Boise air keeps dust floating longer

The Boise area is high desert, and the air inside a new building stays dry most of the year. Fine dust takes longer to settle in dry air, and static makes it cling to plastic and glass. That changes how the job runs. A room can look finished at noon and carry a light film by the end of the day. So we leave the final wipe of the flat surfaces for last, after the air has had time to clear.

Wind is the other problem, mostly in the new subdivisions around Meridian and Kuna. While a house is being built, the lots on either side are often bare dirt. That dirt blows in through open garage doors and window screens. Most of it ends up packed into sliding door tracks and window tracks, where a quick vacuum pass will not lift it. Those tracks get scraped loose first and then vacuumed out, or the grit grinds in the track every time you open the window.

Heating and cooling add a third problem. Builders often run the furnace or the air conditioner while the drywall is being finished, since winters here are cold and summers are hot. The return vent pulls dust into the ducts, and it blows back out for weeks once people move in. We wipe the vent covers and the return vent grille. Ask your builder about the furnace filter too. A clean house with a clogged filter gets dusty again in a few days.

Old and new houses need different care

The new houses going up around Boise are mostly wood frame with textured drywall, the bumpy finish you see on nearly every wall. That texture holds dust in every little ridge. A wall wiped once with a dry cloth still looks gray up close. We go over textured walls with a soft brush on the vacuum first, then wipe them with a cloth that is barely damp. Vinyl plank floors are just as common, and they show every streak of haze left on them. The rinse water gets changed often so no haze dries on the planks.

A remodel in an older Boise house is a different job. The dust from a torn-out kitchen travels through old ductwork and gaps around the trim into rooms nobody touched. Plaster walls, when they get cut, make a heavier, grittier dust than drywall. Older wood floors have gaps between the boards, and grit settles down into them. So on a remodel we clean the rooms next to the work too, and we vacuum along the floorboards before anything gets wiped.

New finishes scratch easily, and construction grit is what scratches them. A dry cloth dragged across a new fiberglass tub or a stainless fridge pulls sand along with it. So we vacuum off anything gritty before it gets wiped, and the cloths get rinsed often. A razor blade only goes on plain glass, and the glass stays wet the whole time. It never touches a tub or a painted door. One careless swipe there leaves a mark you will look at for as long as you own the house.

We clean business spaces after construction

A business space after construction has its own trouble spots. Drop ceilings collect dust along the metal grid, and the light lenses fill with it until the room looks dim. Storefront glass often arrives covered in stickers and tape. Sealed concrete and vinyl tile floors look dull until the construction haze is washed off them. We clean a business space in the same order as a house, from the ceiling grid down, with the floor always last.

The restrooms and the break room get the most attention, because your staff and customers use them from the first day. New toilets and sinks show up with labels stuck on them and dust sitting inside. Mirrors and stall partitions carry fingerprints from the installers. In the break room we clean inside the new cabinets and the sink. If the fridge and microwave went in during the work, we clean inside those too. Those are the rooms people judge a new space by.

Timing decides whether the cleaning lasts. If the electrician comes back to swap a fixture or the painter returns for touch-ups, the dust comes back with them. So book the cleaning after the last contractor has packed up and before furniture and stock move in. Our hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM, so set the cleaning on a weekday before your opening. Tell us what was built and what still has work left, and we plan the order around it.